Look
by Inkfire
Summary: Lucy Saxon watches the world, and walks around with vacant eyes. A series of drabbles about the Master and his wife.


**Here's my very first Doctor Who fanfic… I've not finished season four yet, so this is only relevant to the events of Sound of the Drums and Last of the Time Lords. Composed of 100-word drabbles, except for one which is 300 words long. Not in order, just exploring the Master and Lucy's relationship quite chaotically. The overall effect seemed better. (Third one takes place right after Vivian Rook's murder. The rest should be self-explanatory.)**

**I'm pretty nervous about the abuse parts – it's a touchy issue, and I really tried to slip into Lucy's mind, which is why the way some things are viewed may seem unsettling. I'm sorry if anybody gets offended by my interpretation. Also, I mention Martha as a "strong woman" by the end. It is not in any way meant to belittle women who undergo abuse – just keep in mind that this is Lucy's POV all the way through, and thus the way she views herself, in relation to others. **

**I'll shut up now! **

* * *

The bang was deafening, the end of the world nestled into the crook of her hands.

She shot, and he fell. Eyes wide as if possessed, he stared at her for a second – disbelief, and was it _fear_ flashing across his face? – before he doubled over and crumbled like a doll, into the extended arms of the Doctor. A small, red stain was slowly spreading at his stomach, dark scarlet, almost black. _Harry_, she thought vaguely as the weapon was taken from her white, weak hands – and closed her eyes, with a small wave of vertigo.

Harry had never existed.

* * *

He said she was to call him _Master_, and the look in his eyes everytime she stumbled was enough to suffuse her with rushes of eerily cold terror, so full and overwhelming they were close to delightful, in a terribly twisted way. She, the harmless, pretty, quiet girl – _not especially bright, they said_ – she had a master, a genius, one of a kind. He was something else, something beyond, from the start part of her could feel it. And he had chosen her, he wanted _her_. Wanted her like no other human, hard enough to hurt.

He made her real.

* * *

Lucy stepped into his arms, and shut her eyes tightly, trying hard to block out the world. Oh, the _screaming_, so high, so shrill, so piercing. It would be a part of her now, it seemed – engraved in her head and her hands and the darkness beneath her eyelids, flashing through her again and again. She pressed herself blindly against her husband's form, and felt, beneath her palms, the rapidly-paced beating of his double heart.

She stifled a sob, and his arms tightened around her ribcage.

"Tomorrow," he promised, his voice gentle and caressing – Harry's voice, and yet the Master's.

* * *

Lucy's world had always been made of pretty and proper.

Harry – the Master – was the first person to teach her what it meant, the word _beautiful_. Handsome didn't cover it. Beauty, she discovered, was to be found in _life_ – in tragedy. And the Master was beautiful, a child from another world, all mad eyes and predatory laughter, charming, enthralling, hypnotizing. Whenever she saw him, Lucy's lungs tightened and she thought no one else mattered, no one at all. He made the world horribly stunning. Perhaps he would make her beautiful, too, one day.

(_Lucy was pretty, and his thing forever._)

* * *

He took her to Utopia.

He showed her the world burning, falling apart, children of the future torn into nothingness, and called it beautiful. She clung to his arm, white and terrified, until he brushed her away like a troublesome fly, entirely focused on his masterpiece. He turned the world upside down, and she adored and loathed him for it. Everything was death, everything was destruction, with him laughing in the middle.

(_There is no point, to anything_. _Not ever._)

Without the Master, she knew, she was as good as crushed already – crushed by the things he made her see.

* * *

"Can't you hear it?" he screamed. "Can't you hear it?"

There was no air in her lungs to reply. His hands on her throat, his demented eyes glaring down, and she thought this was it – he'd be the end of her. She saw diamonds dancing in the distance, everything blurring and blending together. If she died now, he'd be alone – with the drumbeat, and the Doctor. (_Possessing him. Maddening him._)

He led her right to the edge, and let her go, coughing and choking as he paced the room.

The next day she wore a scarf, and he looked away.

* * *

Her arms were white and patterned with darkness, all over, writing paths. Alabaster flesh painted hundreds of shades and shapes, never quite the same – she thought it might look beautiful, if she looked closely enough, with that eerie distance she'd felt while staring at the islands of Japan. It might – destruction, tattooed all over her, abstract and merciless. Being alive, being his.

The bruises spoke of pain beyond pain, of fear, and need. She was nothing without him, Lucy knew, and the marks were a reminder, throbbing low.

She couldn't recall what it had ever been like, existing without him.

* * *

As the Master talked, Lucy leaned forwards and clutched a chair, white-knuckled.

She couldn't look at the Doctor, or rather she truly didn't want to, which was, perhaps, why her eyes were irresistibly drawn his way. Lucy had long learned that she couldn't do what she wanted – that nobody could, but the Master – and anyway, she couldn't _not look_. She had looked at Utopia, looked at burning islands far below where people _had_ to be _screaming_, looked into the Joneses' eyes and looked at Harry's face when he snarled for her to do so, though the tears kept her from seeing properly. So she looked this time, as always.

The Doctor was the thing in the cage, odd and helpless, and the Master stood close with his back to her, talking low, passionately, tormenting him. After all this time he still couldn't, wouldn't leave him alone. He was drawn there, to the cage, as though by a magnetic pull (_the drumbeat, the curse_) and he talked and talked, boasted breathlessly as if he needed to reassure himself, while the Doctor stared with sad eyes.

Part of Lucy might have wanted to pull him away, if she hadn't known better. Harry_ needed_ the Doctor as his point of balance, as the small, nagging anxiety that kept him distracted from the _drums, the never-ending smothering drumbeat_. He needed to talk to him, look into his eyes and feel his own power, to know that he hadn't yet destroyed everything. Everything could burn, even her, but not the fallen Time Lord.

Harry talked on – even with his back to her she could tell her gaze was burning – and Lucy hovered, pale arms raising to wrap around her own form, rocking slowly in place, her own equilibrium precariously shifting.

Everything would burn, she knew.

* * *

Without warning, he pulled her into a dance.

Raw, wild energy radiated from his body, and his eyes were laughing, madly gleeful, inviting. He embraced her – too roughly, always, forcing her into his own rhythm – the double drumbeat of his hidden hearts, echoing the cursed drumming in his head. And he twirled her like a doll, hair flying and ribs aching, his _wife – _his faithful companion. One minute, before he strode away, to the Doctor and his own triumphant domination.

Lucy drifted back – a puppet with broken strings, looking far off into the distance, wondering what the day would bring.

* * *

Something shifted, something nameless that spoke through a name. (_Hope_.)

Lucy felt it touch her, from where she stood, up above. She sensed the whole of humanity moving as one, she read the confidence, the wonder in Martha Jones' eyes and voice – a strong woman. Lucy felt the world turning, and it called to her. She was human. She was part of it.

"Doctor," she whispered as her head tilted backwards, as the sensation washed over her.

Her heart followed its own beat, in unison with billions. Light radiated from the cage. Harry's voice echoed with panic.

Lucy breathed, dazed.


End file.
